


Never Have I Ever

by LulaIsAKitten



Series: Denmark Street musings [16]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Curry Night, Drinking Games, F/M, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 21:53:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20919206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LulaIsAKitten/pseuds/LulaIsAKitten
Summary: Curry night at the Herberts gets a bit raucous as a truth-telling drinking game is played. Some secrets are revealed, some aren’t.





	Never Have I Ever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hobbeshalftail3469](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbeshalftail3469/gifts).

Ilsa shrieked and took another glug of her wine. “You haven’t! Tell us more!”

Robin squinted at her. “What are the exact rules here? Do we have to give details?”

“Nope!” Nick shook his head. “As long as you drink to confirm, and you’re honest, the rules of Never Have I Ever state that that’s all you have to do. You can let people wonder and fill in the blanks themselves.”

He winked at Strike, who rolled his eyes. They were all well beyond tipsy and heading into general drunkenness. Ossie and Ricky, who had been delighted at the move into the lounge and had briefly competed for space on Robin’s lap, had retired upstairs to escape the noise (via a check of the empty curry containers). Strike and Nick were lounged in arm chairs with their beers, Robin and Ilsa next to one another on the sofa, the wine bottle on the coffee table in front of them.

Ilsa pouted at her husband. “Are you sure?”

He grinned. “Got to be, or people would just lie if they didn’t want to tell the story.”

Ilsa turned hopefully back to Robin, who shook her head firmly. “Not telling.”

Ilsa looked sulky. “Okay,” she muttered. “But I’m gonna make you tell me one day!”

Robin grinned. “Maybe.”

“Your turn, then, Robin,” Nick said.

“Okay. Okay.” Robin screwed up her face in thought, took a gulp of wine to buy herself some time. “Never have I ever...slept with a friend.”

There was a tiny pause, and then both Nick and Ilsa drank. Robin shrieked and pointed at both of them, her accusing finger waggling back and forth between them.

“No, no, you can’t pretend you were friends first!” she laughed. “I know your first meeting story. And don’t say you’re best friends now, that’s vomit-inducing. I mean someone you were just friends with.”

Nick shot his wife a sideways glance. “I wasn’t saying it was Ilsa.”

Ilsa leaped up, almost knocking the wine bottle off the coffee table. “Hah! I wasn’t saying it was you, either!” Robin grabbed for the teetering bottle and looked from Ilsa to Nick and back again, intrigued.

Strike sat back in his chair and grinned his big grin. “Well, well, this just got interesting! Who first? Um... Off you go, Nick.”

Nick grinned and sat back too. Ilsa returned to her seat to listen.

“Well, it’s not my proudest moment, I have to say,” he admitted. “Nor is it a very long story. Girl on my med course, we’d always got on pretty well. We were friends. On a group night out, we had this very drunk conversation in a bar about friendships and relationships and sex, and I somehow got the impression she was after a friends-with-benefits type situation and went back to hers for the night. Turns out she was trying to say how nice it would be to find a friend you could sleep with because then you’d have the perfect boyfriend. Never spoke to me again after we got the misunderstanding cleared up. In the morning.”

Ilsa laughed and clapped her hands. “Ooh, Nick, you heartbreaker, you!”

“Hey, not my fault!” Nick protested. “You tell a twenty-year-old bloke who’s your mate that you’d love to find a friend you could shag, he’s going to oblige!”

Chortling and nodding along, Strike raised his beer in salute, and the two drank.

Robin shook her head at them both fondly. “Men!”

She swung to face Ilsa. “Right, your turn. Whose heart did you break?”

Ilsa pressed her lips together primly. “Don’t think I can tell mine.”

“Ils!” Robin cried. “Why not?”

“Because the friend I slept with didn’t drink, so maybe he doesn’t want me to tell.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then all eyes swung to Strike. Ilsa’s amused, Robin’s round like saucers, and Nick’s narrowed suddenly in a combination of scepticism and a hint of uncertainty.

Strike laughed at them all. “Well, you’d better tell it now. And quickly, before your husband thumps me one!”

Nick’s gaze swung back to Ilsa, who was giggling. “Ils?”

Ilsa just grinned cheekily. “You didn’t drink, Corm.”

He rolled his eyes at her fondly. “That’s because it doesn’t count, as well you know.” His eyes flickered, just for a moment, to Robin, who was watching the exchange in fascination.

“We slept together!” Ilsa insisted.

Nick’s gaze moved back to his old friend, and Strike held up his hands in supplication, laughing again. “Ilsa, you know perfectly well that in this context, the implication of the term ‘slept together’ is sex. Now stop messing about and put poor Nick out of his misery.”

Ilsa giggled at Nick bristling, his eyes back on her now. “Okay. Corm and I shared a bed once at uni. But no, nothing happened.”

“Never mind, we want to hear anyway,” Robin said, as Nick relaxed back into his chair. “So there was only one bed?” She giggled. “Cliche much?”

Ilsa laughed. “Yup!” she said. “I went down to see Corm in our first year at uni. I was...struggling a bit, Nick and I had only split up a few months before, and I loved the course but I was kind of lonely and craving home. Oxford was a lot nearer than Cornwall, so I went for the weekend.”

She took another gulp of wine and smiled at Strike a little mistily. “He was lovely, made me properly laugh for the first time in ages. We went out drinking, I met all his friends. But not Charlotte?”

Strike shook his head. “Hadn’t met her yet.”

“And he gave up his bed for me, he was going to sleep on the floor—”

“I’d even been to the laundrette and washed the sheets!” Strike said proudly, remembering.

“But it was cold - it was, like, February, cold and dark - and I was a bit drunk and lonely and sad, and Corm was shivering on the floor and I was shivering in the bed—”

“That whole block was so damp,” Strike added.

“—and I just asked Corm to get in bed with me and warm me up,” Ilsa went on. “I was wearing my fluffiest pyjamas, and I think you were actually in a jumper and trackie bottoms, it was so cold?”

Strike nodded.

“And the next thing I knew, it was morning.” Ilsa smiled. “It was best night’s sleep I’d had in months. He’s like a giant teddy bear.”

“Was it a single bed?” Robin asked, giggling.

“Yup!” Ilsa grinned shamelessly. “He had to spoon me all night. I felt so cosy and safe. He’s lovely to sleep with, all warm and soft.”

Nick snorted a laugh into a cough, and Strike laughed and raised his beer again. “I promise you that’s accurate,” he said with a lewd wink. “Warm and _soft_. She is my friend, after all.”

Nick shook his head and rolled his eyes, but he was looking considerably happier than he had at the start of the conversation.

“D’you know what it reminded me of?” Strike said suddenly.

Robin sniggered. “Careful!”

Strike pulled a face at her. “It reminded me of one year when me and Lucy were young. I think I was about twelve, so she’d have been ten or eleven. We were in this commune over the winter, mum had a boyfriend there. He had some weird ideas, stuff he was passionate about, and he used to get loud and rant about stuff when he was drunk. Never hit her that I knew of, but he yelled a lot. Lucy used to come and creep into bed with me because she couldn’t sleep. She was half my size, like you are,” he grinned at Ilsa. “That feeling of being the one to protect someone you care about, that you can do that for them, that night in Oxford reminded me of that.”

He paused, and silence settled over the room. “It made me realise we were kind of grown up now,” he finished, quietly. “I’d felt overwhelmed by the responsibility when it was Lucy. I was only a kid myself. But at - what were we, nineteen? - it seemed more right, somehow. Like I could do that and it didn’t scare me to be the one someone turned to. I was glad you had, and that I could help.”

He stopped, and the silence stretched.

Strike cleared his throat and grinned and looked around at them all. “Well, that killed the mood!” he said cheerfully, and suddenly everyone was laughing again.

“Right, our turn,” Ilsa said, grinning at her husband. “Okay, um....never have I ever done it on my desk at work—” she grinned at Nick’s raised eyebrow “—without the door locked!”

“Right, more beer!” Nick said, jumping to his feet while everyone burst out laughing again. “I’ve had quite enough of this game with my wife in this mood, she’ll be telling all our state secrets soon!”

“Spoilsport,” Ilsa said, wrinkling her nose at him. “Grab another bottle of vino from the fridge.”

“Oh, God, Ilsa, I don’t think I can manage any more,” Robin said. “I think tomorrow might be a write-off as it is. And I still have to get home.”

“Stay,” Ilsa wheedled. “Go on, staaaaaay. We can have girly brunch tomorrow.”

Robin dropped her gaze. “I can’t, sorry,” she said. “Things to do tomorrow.”

Ilsa pouted but nodded. “Need a wee,” she announced. “And to check my husband is still talking to me.” She scrambled to her feet and wobbled out of the room.

Robin cast her eyes sideways at Strike. He was grinning at her.

“Giant teddy bear?” she said softly, sliding along the sofa towards his chair. “That’s not a side of you I’ve seen yet.” She lowered her voice. “Not when you’re in bed with me.”

Strike chuckled, his eyes darting to the door and back to hers, then dropping to her delectable mouth which he’d struggled not to stare at all evening. “I thought you wanted to keep this just between us for now?” he murmured. He watched, mesmerised, as she put her glass down and reached across to him, her hand on his leg, rising up out of her seat to lean across and kiss him.

She pressed her soft, full lips to his and then drew away again, grinning. “Thought I might have given the game away when I admitted to snogging over a photocopier. Can’t believe Ilsa’s never done that.”

“Oh, I can,” Strike replied, wishing she’d kiss him again. “I’ve been to her office. Very open plan. Besides—” he hissed a breath in as her nails trailed up his thigh, scraping lightly through his trousers “—they don’t know we bought a photocopier.”

Heat swept through him as her hand slid higher. “You said you’d never slept with a friend,” he managed.

Robin kissed him again, slowly, her tongue teasing the edge of his lip and then withdrawing again, making him shiver.

“I haven’t,” she said. “You were a stranger, and then my boss, and I kind of went straight from that to fancying you.”

“Is that so?” He leaned to capture her mouth again and she drew back, grinning, her hand sliding across his groin until he groaned and dropped back against the chair.

“Would you have drunk for the last one?”

Strike pretended to be thinking about that and not about her hand and its exploration. “Couldn’t. We locked the door.”

Robin grinned. “Not the first time,” she murmured, and felt him twitch beneath her hand as he moaned a little, remembering. “Warm and soft, eh? Warm, I’ll accept.” She winked. “Soft? Not so much.”

Strike captured her hand. “If you don’t stop, there’ll be no keeping the secret any more,” he growled. “Well done for getting out of staying over, by the way.”

Robin smiled softly and pressed a last swift kiss to his lips before dropping back onto the sofa as Nick and Ilsa reappeared.

“Right,” Ilsa cried. “Nick says no more revelations, so I’ve found Trivial Pursuit. Girls against boys?”

A general murmur of agreement went round as Ilsa laid out the board and Nick topped up their glasses. Robin met Strike’s fond gaze across the room and wrinkled her nose at him just a little.

**Author's Note:**

> For hobbeshalftail3469, who loves Strike-and-Robin-keeping-their-relationship-a-secret, and who suggested that ending. And I think that then caused you to remember the “What exactly were you doing up there?” piece, Hobbes?
> 
> This piece was inspired by a little twist-in-the-tale item I read about there being only one bed, and the relationship staying platonic.


End file.
